A Little Background Music

Marce was tired when she parked her bike and made her way into the cabin. Working extra hours and a second job left her little time for anything else. It was going to take money to get Hando out of jail, her money because she knew he didn’t have it. She did have money from her family’s estate but she’d never touch it. It was death money.  Tonight for some reason she was thinking about her mother.

Marce made herself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa listening to Hando’s records. Her mother would not have believed what she had become. Marce sipped her tea and said aloud, "Mumma, I’m going to change, I can…I know you would not approve of Hando but you don’t know him," a little stronger now, "We’re going to make it. Once he’s back things are going to be different." She wiped her tears and thought of her sister, Ahnna. No tears were to be shed over her, murderer.

Marce hadn’t seen Ahnna since the funeral when she’d gone home gathered a bag of clothes and left. She lived in her car until she found a bloke, then another bloke, then a job, another job, another bloke. What did it matter anyway? Booze and drugs took a toll on Marce and she ended up in hospital where a kind fellow patient offered her a job at the leather shop. She’d been drug free for nearly a year, found a tiny flat and then she met Hando. He was different from anybody she’d ever known. Marce thought he was running from his past too. That’s why it was hard for her to understand why he’d messed up the Solicitor’s office.

She wanted to see him, touch him, be with him, "Tomorrow," she whispered, "I will see you."

Hando with nothing else to do had spent many hours in thought. He had been thinking about his mate Davey and the stupid mental bitch Gabe. He wondered where they went when they left Melbourne. He knew without a doubt she was responsible for the death and imprisonment of his mates. Melbourne felt like a lifetime away now. For the first time he was alone, no one to back him up, no one to get him out of jail. He hadn’t seen Marce since Christmas, maybe she was gone too.